Printing executive was loyal, respected

Daniel W. Cain, who was 29 when he became president of the printing company his father founded and who became known as an innovator in the industry, died Monday in Toledo Hospital. He was 62.

He died from complications of a blood disorder, his wife, Barbara, said.

He retired three years ago from Industrial Printing Co., and the firm's two divisions were sold to son-in-law Chuck Delaney.

Mr. Cain of Sylvania Township was 15 when he started at the company that his father, L. Wilbur Cain, began in the late 1930s. He graduated to the bindery, then to the printing press.

He was 26 when the elder Mr. Cain announced his imminent retirement - and the promotion of the younger Mr. Cain to president.

“He learned from the school of hard knocks, without a college education,” his wife said. “He worked 12 hours a day. I raised the family; his job was to make the printing presses run.”

When he was president, the firm employed about 150 and had annual sales of $30 million, placing it among the top printing companies in the country, his son, Larry, who worked with him, said.

The firm's specialties included business forms and four-color brochures.

Mr. Cain was the master of calculated risk, family members and friends said. He was among the first business form printers in the area to buy a web press so that forms were printed from a roll of paper, instead of individual sheets fed into a press.

“He was a pioneer in web printing and business forms,” his son said. “He had the entrepreneurial skill to measure risk and reward. He learned how to crunch numbers and he just had a mind for that logical path that would say, `The first two years, I might lose money, but the third, fourth, fifth, I'll make money.'”

In the business, “Dan was thought of with the highest possible respect,” said S. Dean Roberts, retired owner and chief executive officer of Commerce Paper Co. and a longtime friend.

“He was fiercely loyal to his employees and customers. He was moral and ethical. He was fantastically successfully,” Mr. Roberts said. “He would do exhaustive studies before he would buy a piece of equipment. He always surrounded himself with good accountants. His facts were right down to the nub.”

Mr. Cain was a former president of Printing Industries of Toledo, of which he was a founder, and was an officer in national printing associations. He graduated from Whitmer High School.